


Rewriting The Rules

by Britpacker



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1410262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long ago he had made a decision never to mix business with pleasure, but Cardinal Richelieu is a man who learns by his mistakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Contemplation

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring the relationship between the Cardinal and my unnamed OFC. She’s one of his agents, but how did she move from business into his bed? How does the most powerful priest in France go about acquiring a new mistress? It’s turning into a longer fic than I intended, so will be broken down into two or three chapters before I’m done.

She dips her head in acknowledgement of his dismissal, her ruby red cape billowing around her slender frame as she darts from the chapel’s seclusion, down the back stairs from his apartments and through the protective shadows of the courtyard to the small side gate his predecessors might have installed for just this purpose. She is all he could wish for in one of his creatures: deft, intelligent and utterly ruthless, willing to use whatever weapon she might find to hand. In the cause of France, or so she claims.

His cause, to be sure. He doubts there’s any true patriotism in that stony heart.

She’s beautiful, though. A connoisseur, he can’t fail to appreciate that.

Beautiful women make the best agents. Most men, he recognised long ago, carry their brains in a more southerly location than their skulls, and over the years he has found cause to be profoundly grateful for the fact. Give the wiliest traitor a glimpse of a creamy satin thigh and his guard will drop so low he’ll never notice the knife blade until it bites into his throat. And if there’s a Spanish, Vatican or English agent alive who can resist boasting of his vitally important mission to impress a wide-eyed, shapely girl, Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu has yet to find him.

The bolder of them – and he expects them to be bold, fluttering timidity might work with another man but never with him – delight in flirting with their powerful patron. The downward cast of the lashes; the small, secret smiles; the sway of the body toward him when he speaks. He enjoys it immensely, and without a shred of guilt.

A cardinal is still, first and foremost, a man. He makes no apology for the fact.

Still, he had set himself a firm rule when his foot first touched the path to political power. Business cannot with pleasure mix. His women, like their male counterparts, are weapons in his arsenal, to be deployed with the same calculation as cannon on the battlefield. To become embroiled with one, however tempting, would be a dangerous mistake.

Better, he used to think, to take a simple country girl, establish her in a comfortable Parisian house and escape the burden of his duties there. The Cardinal cannot take risks and a careless, good-hearted creature without a thought in her pretty head for politics seemed a better option than one of his own cold, conscienceless assassins.

Something tightens in his chest but he refuses to dwell on the unfamiliar sensation. It’s enough to admit that perhaps he was mistaken. 

None of his chosen creatures would betray him so recklessly. None would be in any doubt of their fate when – and it would be when, not if – he found out.

He draws the lovely face of his nocturnal visitor in his mind; the pile of ebony hair, the pale, catlike green eyes, the perfect, sensual mouth. Milady de Winter is a soulless murderer, a fact he uses to its full advantage. Exquisite, but lethal.

While he appreciates her physical perfections the fact remains: there’s a bleakness about her that repels him. Adele, for all her faults, had possessed a sensual warmth that called irresistibly to his inner coldness. 

Forcefully he steers his mind away from pointless regrets, busying himself with the altar’s many candles. Allowing himself to be beguiled by a buxom flibbertigibbet had been the height of folly, and while he is as fallible as any other man the Cardinal makes it a point of honour never to repeat his mistakes.

Perhaps, after all, he should consider tumbling with one of his useful women. He’s not a vain man and his position makes any notion of dandyism ridiculous, but he holds the power of life and death in his hands and he’s quite astute enough to recognise the force of his own charisma. It as much as his ferocious intellect has propelled him to his pre-eminent position in the King’s counsels. 

There would be no place for emotional attachment, but he’s recently learned a bitter lesson there. He trusted Adele; allowed himself to feel a touch of human warmth when she fretted and fawned, lying through her fine white teeth about her devotion to him. His creatures, dependent upon his favour, will make no such grandiose, incredible claims. He can use them in the full knowledge it’s fear, not affection which brings them to his bed.

Something deep behind his ribs – a lesser man might call it his heart - contracts at the cold-blooded assessment but lower down a tender, ticklish sensation distracts him admirably. He had taken his vows at ordination in the full knowledge that celibacy did not suit him; made his peace with God, resigning himself to punishment in the next world for the pleasures he couldn’t live without in this. Now, if he can hope for nothing more, sexual gratification at least ought not to be beyond his grasp.

He runs their faces through his mind. Angelic beauties all of them, with the inflexible pragmatism of Satan himself behind their beguiling smiles. Calculating enough to submit themselves to their patron at his smallest hint.

Except… except. Submission alone can never enough for a man who craves the full fire of physical passion. He knows better than to believe he would have it from one of his paid assassins, in duty bound to serve him any way he commands.

“Your Eminence?”

His grim reverie is disturbed by a melodious voice from the chapel door. She’s among the boldest of them all; few dare enter here without his express permission. Barely six months in his service yet she’s already proven herself determined, capable and, above all, unflinchingly obedient to his command.

“Come.” Her dark eyes are glowing with excitement and within the billowing folds of her cloak her hands are clasped around a small packet that causes the smallest shudder in his stony heart. “You encountered no difficulty?” he asks, deliberately brusque.

“None.” Whether through inexperience or rashness she doesn’t wince from a tone that makes the seasoned men of his household stutter in dread. “Once word began to spread of his Jesuit education….”

“Good.” The Vatican’s courier had shown a courage the Cardinal must admire, strutting through the Huguenot quarter of Montpellier instead of taking a safer route, but that reckless bravado had given him an unexpected opportunity which this fiery patriot had seized in his name. “You were not noticed?”

“In a backstreet at midnight?” There’s something akin to scorn in the dismissive words, and her eyes widen in shock when she realises how she’s just spoken to him, the most powerful man in the whole of France. He inclines his head. 

He doesn’t mind a little fire in his agents’ bellies. And it makes a stimulating change to be addressed as – almost – an equal by this chit of a girl.

“I beg Your Eminence’s pardon,” she says, suddenly bashful. It doesn’t suit her.

Surprisingly gentle – he can be, when it suits – he extends a long, thin hand and tilts her chin. “Well done,” he says, and he wonders if he’s really referring to more than the successful completion of her task. Rome’s infernal meddling in French affairs has been dealt a blow with her agent’s demise, and that can only be cheering news.

For his part the most important priest in the kingdom has no objection to the Huguenots damning themselves in any way they see fit. He wants only their obedience to their King and their taxes paid on time.

Their immortal souls are their concern, not his.

She presses the Pope’s instructions, still stained at the corner with his messenger’s blood, into his hands. Unopened, he notices. “Tell me,” he says. “Were you not curious?”

She holds his contemplative stare with impressive steadiness. “Your Eminence will do what’s best for France,” she says simply. “I don’t pretend to understand why we’re consorting with these Protestant heathens but if it’s for the good of the kingdom…. I know my duty as a Frenchwoman. I’d never have entered your service otherwise.”

Again he dips his head, releasing his light grip on her delicate jaw. The peachy smoothness of her warm skin seems to linger on his fingertips and he has to drop his hand to his side to stop himself staring at them. “I was not expecting you so soon,” he says, almost apologetic. “But at least when the King sees what you’ve brought me I imagine you’ll receive a double reward.”

She drops a graceful curtsy. “Pleasing you is reward enough.”

He’s heard the words a thousand times. He rarely believes them. Why else but for profit would these villains stain their hands and souls? Does he really imagine a single one of them is motivated, as he is, by the glorious future he foresees for France?

He remembers Milady de Winter’s glacial acceptance of her reward. There is a woman who would kill for the pleasure of killing alone. Appropriated into his service she’s a useful pawn in the greater game. Unchecked, she would be what she was before: a murderess, a thief and a whore.

Something about this woman’s bright face and earnest eyes suggests she is different.

He’s not paid her much attention before. Perhaps that was a mistake but she’s had few opportunities to catch his eye, being restricted to gathering intelligence in the streets and markets of Paris and bringing it mostly to the captain of his guards. Her obscurity made her a good choice for the Montpelier business, and she appears to have managed that elegantly enough. 

Perhaps, he thinks, he should devote a little more of his time to these lesser mortals.


	2. Calculation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He may be interested, but the Cardinal is also cautious. His agent is less so. Perhaps that’s part of her appeal?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I’m not very disciplined this fic could go on for months; to prevent that happening, I’m skimming through that kind of period in a series of short scenes with this chapter.

He calls her to his palace with increasing frequency as the weeks melt into each other, taking a guilty pleasure in the throaty hum of her voice in the shadows of his chambers when, their heads close together, he murmurs her instructions and she, obedient and attentive, parrots them back. 

He doesn’t fail to notice how her pupils dilate when he stoops to breathe a warning word into her ear. Only a man as obtuse as the King would fail to hear the hitch in her breathing when he lays his hand lightly, a mocking benediction, on her soft, satiny hair. He’s familiar with the reaction.

What is unfamiliar is the effect it has on him. She is disturbing. He wonders briefly whether he’d be wise to delegate responsibility for her to his devoted acolyte the Comte de Rochefort. She’s primarily just a spy after all. Not in the front rank of his murderous creatures despite her diligence in Montpelier: he’s still not sure she had the casual amorality they need for the blackest aspects of his business, and yet with each new mission she’s making herself so useful.

Her eyes and ears are as sharp as her dagger’s point and the intelligence she brings him is unfailingly accurate. What’s more, her judgements are acute. 

That is, he’s honest enough to admit, another way of saying they align in every way with his.

He’s intrigued.

The next time he pays her fee he allows his fingers to linger in the palm of her hand with the coins, just to see how she’ll respond.

It’s no great surprise to him that she shivers; nor that the breath catches in her throat. The smile that touches her lips, though – that’s unexpected in its playfulness. And, perhaps, its smugness.

The next time they meet it’s in public and he is the one taken aback when she kneels for his blessing, among the front ranks of the exuberant throng crowding to see Their Majesties come from Mass at Notre Dame. Her glance, brief and bright as a blackbird’s, snags his for an instant and the mischief he sees in it snaps his iron self-control. He favours her, and the simpering tradesman’s wife next in line, with an uncharacteristic smile.

When he reflects on it much later, he accepts that was the moment his decision was made.

*

He is the most powerful man in the country, apparently. His word is the King’s law. If it were really so his life would be more comfortable than it is, but the legend of the Scarlet Eminence has its uses. As Machiavelli so wisely wrote it is better to be feared than loved, and even those who despise him most fear the wrath of the great Cardinal Richelieu.

She, it seems, does not fear him at all and while he wonders at her ignorance he can’t help but admire her for it. When he lifts her hand to his lips for the first time, keeping his steely gaze on her face to gauge the reaction, she doesn’t flinch or back away. Instead, she slides her fingers through to link with his, pressing her succulent palm against his weathered one. The invitation is so brazen he can’t resist, dancing the tip of his tongue across her knuckles. 

Her shaky exhale seems to pass from his ear direct to his groin. “You are my good servant, mademoiselle, are you not?” he murmurs. The hand in his trembles.

“Only yours,” she affirms, throatier than he’s ever heard her before. She licks her lips, but her gaze doesn’t waver. 

Something cracks deep inside him at the sudden, bitter memory: Adele’s cornflower coloured gaze drifting away every time she made that same blithe promise. How could he have been such a purblind fool not to recognise its meaning?

“And you know what becomes of those who disappoint me?”

He phrases it as a question. If she’s as clever as he believes, she’ll hear it as a threat.

“They have the fate they deserve.”

“Indeed. And that fate....”

“To betray Your Eminence is to betray France herself. The punishment for such treason can only be death.”

“Good girl.” Slowly, he lowers his head, holding his breath until he feels hers fanning steadily through his mustache.

She melts into his kiss, her lithe, supple form grinding against him; her lips come apart, eagerly welcoming his questing tongue. He’s a little shocked by her wantonness; even more disturbed by his starved body’s greedy response. And when he sets her lightly back he’s relieved to see not a glimmer of pious horror in those wide, expressive brown eyes. 

“Don’t ever forget that,” he says, and it’s for her to assess whether he means the kiss, the warning or both. She touches a fingertip to her lips and holds it there while she backs away.

The message, he gathers, is received and understood.

*

The next time he kisses her they’re in his study, her reward for intelligence received clinking in its pouch as it falls to the floor between them. It’s just a tumble he tells himself while he fumbles, out of practise with the complicated buttons and lacings of corset and gown. A momentary release from the gloomy affairs of a bankrupt state, nothing more.  


When she curses, fluent as any solider, at the equally numerous hooks, buttons and ties on his clothes, it’s all he can do not to laugh. She is enchanting. 

Fascinating. Mercurial. Passionate in a way he’s just beginning to realise he has not experienced in far too many years. And when they disentangle themselves on the floor after she seems much more concerned by the bruises and scrapes he’s acquired than her own. “There’d be many a man delighted to inflict such marks on the Cardinal,” she observes, delighted by her own insolence. He arches an eyebrow.

“I dare say they’d prefer the wounds to be somewhat deeper,” he deadpans, reaching for his scattered garments with uncharacteristic clumsiness. She is glorious: living proof of Divine munificence, and yet she eyes him hungrily, as if he not she were perfection sculpted in flesh. Her succulent, kiss-bruised mouth twists.

“Then France is full of fools when what she needs is patriots!”

It echoes his opinion so perfectly he’s at a momentary loss for words. “A few patriots can achieve a great deal,” he says sedately, conscious she expects a response. “And fools can always be guided by an intelligent man.”

It’s almost an indiscretion; a small test she passes with flying colours, murmuring no more than a bland compliment in return. 

This one is as discreet as she is clever. A valuable combination in a mistress as well as a spy.


	3. Consummation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She seems the ideal companion, but how to broach the question? Fortunately for Cardinal Richelieu, Armand du Plessis has the answer.

Still, he’s not reckless. He has to be sure there’ll be no rumour sweeping Paris this time, nobody recalling those youthful indiscretions from the days before his destiny was changed from the military to the Church. No sensible man would think ill of his conduct then. Many an aspiring young officer had behaved far worse but still: he is the Cardinal now and there are many who would dig up any ancient slander in their efforts to discredit him with the King. 

His agents populate every district of Paris and they’re under orders to bring any calumny they hear of him to his door. He’s never been a man who flinches from hearing ill spoken of himself: why would he be? He knows the darkest places in his own soul. He needs no ignorant citizenry to sit in judgement on him. 

Most of all he needs to know there is no rival for her affections. He’s aware of how little he can offer compared with other men, and he has no desire to provide a trysting place for other lovers again. He has her watched, by one spy then another. 

They think nothing of it. Habitually suspicious, the Cardinal has all of his agents followed at some time in their service.

It takes several weeks, and a few more mutually satisfactory encounters, before he is ready to act. He’s intrigued to see her response; she confounds his expectations on a regular basis, so when he summons her to a new address, a respectable street in a modest corner of the city he’s uncertain whether she will obey unquestioningly or not.

He’s more pleased than he cares to realise when she arrives at the appointed hour, soberly gowned like any reputable tradesman’s daughter or sister. If she’s curious, she hides it well.

He shows her the house and she’s properly admiring. “Who owns it?” she asks when they’re back in the parlour, seated on either side of the fireplace. 

“I do.”

So different from Adele, he muses, the realisation prickling out in conflicting sensations through the pit of his stomach. He can almost hear the cogs grinding in her head. “A place of refuge, Your Eminence?” she suggests, delicately dipping her lashes on the title she now usually avoids. 

It’s the last thing he wants to hear in this place. “You’re mistaken, my dear,” he says, low and silky. “This house belongs to Armand du Plessis; not to Cardinal Richelieu.”

“I see.” For the first time she actually blushes before him, she who is so brazen in his bed. “And am I to assume it’s Monsieur du Plessis who invited me to visit him here?”

“Indeed.”

She favours him with a smile as she rises and sinks into a reverence that wouldn’t be out of place at court. “Then I thank you, Monsieur. You have a very charming house.”

“Less charming for standing empty so long,” he muses.

He sounds so unconcerned that he surprises himself. They both know where this is leading; he can tell by the colour that touches her cheeks, the quick, fluttering glances she sends that keep skittering across his face. “Your servants look after it beautifully,” she remarks.

His servants. Yes, she understands. He doesn’t like to think of it as a gilded cage for a beautiful songbird, but effectively that’s all he can offer. “Still, more comfortable than rented rooms, I dare say,” he observes.

“Infinitely more so.” He watches her throat contract as she swallows hard, steeling herself. “Armand.”

It’s the first time she has used his given name; the first time he’s heard it from anyone but the King in several months, and it resonates through his head like that songbird’s sweet chorus. “You understand what living here would entail, my dear,” he states, accepting the permission she grants. 

“I’m already yours, whether as Armand or the Cardinal.” She says it as if it were an obvious fact, gliding closer to stoop and brush her lips feather-light across his brow. Her mouth doesn’t move, even as the flesh beneath it forms the tight furrows of a frown. “You know I’m faithful to you in body and soul or you would never have brought me here.”

“And how would I know that?” he challenges, intrigued. She pulls back, arms crossed, and grins down at him. 

“I’m not stupid, Armand.” He thinks she says his name for the sake of it, still testing its roll against her tongue. “Oh, they’ve been very discreet. I can’t say for certain I’ve been followed at all, but… you’d be cautious. You wouldn’t make a proposition of this nature without knowing exactly who you dealt with.”

Even when surprised he can maintain his imperturbable composure; a skill learned at court that’s never been more useful than now. “You’re admirably thorough in gathering intelligence; I know that.”

“I suppose you do.” She’s not offended. She’s too young to have mastered deception to the extent necessary to outwit him and what’s more, she’s still uncertain. Unlike Adele, entrapped by her own sexual arrogance, so sure of her position, this woman is fascinated, excited, and for the first time in his presence just a little bit afraid.

“I suppose you won’t come to me very often,” she says sadly.

“Not as often as I might wish.” He can offer no promises. It bodes well that she understands his position.

“But when you come to me I may have Armand and not the Cardinal?”

“They’re one and the same.”

“Are they?”

He can feel his lips twitch. He simply can’t stop them. She really is the most beguiling creature. “Two sides of the same coin, my dear. To share a bed with one is to be the mistress of both.”

“Two men for the price of one,” she exclaims, clasping her hands and spinning across the hearth. “How very stimulating! Some poor wretches can’t even find a single lover and it seems I’m to have two!”

“Some might say that as they share the same face, the excitement would be halved.”

“And a very fine, handsome face it is.” Carefully she traces its features, her fingertips dancing over the puzzled cast he can’t quite keep off them. He certainly doesn’t consider himself handsome, although he’s sufficiently self-aware to understand the power of his physical presence. “I’m not compelled to accept your very generous offer; I will because I choose to. You wouldn’t hold a woman by force, that’s not your way.”

He’s never had to, he accepts. The women in his past have come willingly to his bed, and until Adele none had defiled it. If they had, he would have discovered. He has agents with sharp eyes and tongues to match across France, this bright, perceptive chit among them. “You’ll need to pay your current landlord a pretty sum to leave, I suppose?” he suggests. Her shoulders lift.

“Most likely. He’s as greedy as a fat abbot - begging Your Eminence’s pardon, of course.”

“My Eminence has little enough time for abbots, fat or thin, but this is not the Cardinal’s house.”

He recognises the ice that encrusts each word. So, by the way she blenches, does she. 

“I beg your pardon – again,” she says, making a joke of her discomfort. He offers his hand and when she takes it he uses it to draw her down onto his lap.

“I have had years of practise in separating Armand from the Cardinal, my dear.” He can be kind; when his creatures are good and loyal they’ll be rewarded and it’s only good practise that they should understand that fact. She nestles against his chest, her head on his shoulder so her soft, warm breath fans the side of his neck. It’s ticklish, but he doesn’t mind. It’s human contact.

Sexual contact – he’s had that in his life for a while, courtesy of this nubile girl. Until now, however, that’s all it has been. Now, he accepts, it’s changed. Now she is not just an infrequent ornament to warm his bed. Now, she is officially his mistress. His companion.

It’s a position of trust, and that unnerves him. Trust doesn’t come easily to him even when it’s rigorously limited, hedged around by his employees watching her every move. It would astonish much of Paris to discover it, but the Cardinal does have a heart. He’s simply too wise to allow it to be touched often.

He turns his head to the side, his mouth coming to rest chastely against hers. Hers turns up, ever so slightly. “You know I love you, Armand,” she murmurs, as if it matter shouldn’t even need to be raised. The pressure of her soft, full lips against his narrow ones increases, her tongue ticking along the crease between them. “I am yours, completely, for as long as you’ll have me.”

Such sweet, beguiling words, made all the sweeter by the familiar delicious pressure beginning to build in his groin. Shifting against him she must be aware of it; it takes him a moment to realise she’s deliberately doing all she can to encourage it.

“Won’t you show me that charming bedchamber again, my love?” she coos, and the sensation spreads to possess his whole being, suffusing him with a tingling heat he cannot resist. With a strength not immediately obvious in his slender frame he rises, setting her delicately on her feet.

“I cannot stay too long,” he warns, lest she get any foolish, romantic notions. She shrugs.

It makes her look like a recalcitrant schoolboy. “I must be home before dark, else my landlord’s likely to lock me out in the gutter again,” she announces. “But surely we’ve time… if it be your wish, of course.”

“Of course.” He lets her lead him to the door, amused and impressed that she positions herself so carefully, shielding the obvious signs of his intent from any onlooker. He knows none of the servants will venture near the main rooms when he’s present; the consideration is unnecessary, but he appreciates it all the same.

She gives herself without hesitation, shy only when he guides her hands to the buttons of his jerkin, silently encouraging her to remove it. Her ardour in his arms shakes him; it’s as if she can’t touch him enough, her body arching, melting into his. The effect on his formidable self-restraint is even more shocking.

It dissolves.

*

She’s still a touch dishevelled when they leave the house, rejecting his offer of his carriage to her present residence with a smile. “I’d as soon not draw his attention to my reason for leaving, Armand,” she says, pragmatic to a fault. “He’d only increase the termination fee if he thought I was going to a lover wealthy enough to have his own coach! If you could send someone to help remove my things, though….”

“Send me word when you are ready.”

Her smile is dazzling. “Oh, then tomorrow morning at nine would suit admirably!”

He can feel his eyebrows rising. “No time to reflect? It might be wiser to consider….”

“To weigh the freedom I’ll lose against what I gain from being kept by you?” He flinches inwardly from her directness, but it’s fair; the balance is one he knows to be tilted heavily in his favour. “My love, that judgement’s made and I shan’t be the one to change it! Promise me you’ll come soon and see how nicely I keep your house for you!”

There is, he concedes, nothing to be done but to agree, stepping into his carriage while she darts away down a side alley and the man he has posted in readiness makes his more sedate way in her wake. 

Trust must have its limits, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this finished, mostly because I have a few other Musketeers fics on the go that won't behave and let me finish them at all! I hope you enjoyed this one - thanks for reading!


End file.
